Stories Behind the Songs – “Two-Spirit”
The opening song of Transposition functions as sort of an overture in addition to introducing the setting and some characters; several other opera songs are foreshadowed in this one. However, in its initial incarnation, it consisted only of the verses and choruses, which were written mainly in January 2005. Nearly a year later, in December, I woke up one morning with the idea to put snippets of other songs in there, and even how to do it. I was certainly inspired by The Who’s “Overture” from Tommy, as well as a piece from Pink Floyd’s live show of The Wall called “The Last Few Bricks”. So I stuck riffs and melodies from “Stand Up”, “She’s Changing”, “What Am I?”, and “Won’t Do It Again” in the middle where I had formerly planned to place a guitar solo, and stuck the ending to “We Can Love” at the end of this song.
The opening, Who-like acoustic guitar riff is actually the oldest piece of music on the album, having been written in May 1998. I often have little stray fragments and ideas that I store away, waiting for a time when I might find a use for them. At the time that we recorded this song, most of the referenced songs hadn’t been recorded or even arranged yet.
While the vocal melody is mine, the vocal arrangement is entirely John’s; he wrote it all out on sheet on sheet music and Katie, Pen, and I learned it from there.